CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

defined in its essence by rationality and freedom, nor can history in general be
understood in terms of a teleological progression toward rationality and reconciliation.
Rather, the progression of history appears as a series of catastrophes. To the Hegelian
picture of history as a uni-directional progression towards ever-greater rationality and
freedom, we can juxtapose the picture of Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus:
Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind
ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der
Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint,
da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer häuft und sie ihm
vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das
Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradiese her, der sich
in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr
schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den
Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das,
was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm. 35
What is essential about the juxtaposition of this view of history, told from the standpoint
of the ‘natural’ suffering moment in the self, with the Hegelian standpoint, is not that the
natural standpoint is the final truth and the Hegelian narrative is simply false, but rather
that the two narratives are contradictory and one-sided, and they cannot be subsumed
under a third and final narrative that accommodates them and reduces them to inadequate
moments of the truth.
35 Benjamin, Walter, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I.2
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), 699. English translation by Harry Zohn in “Theses on the
Philosophy of History,” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 257:
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of
history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a
storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel
can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is
turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
37